Your Body: The Key to Your House, Your Car, Your Gun

What’s the Latest Development?

A new wireless authentication system called BodyCom could change the way locked doors are opened and the way firearms are activated by using the human body as a password. “[The technology] uses capacitive coupling to transmit a signal between a pocket-sized fob and a base station, with your body in the middle. If you’re wearing or carrying the fob and you touch a base station embedded in, say, a doorknob, the base sends a 125-kilohertz signal via your body to the fob to wake it up. The fob then sends an eight-megahertz authentication signal back to the base to approve your access.”

What’s the Big Idea?

The technology, currently under development by Mircochip Technology, could have a wide range of security applications, according to the company’s security development business manager. “With the technology in place, you could unlock your front door just by touching the doorknob; power tools and guns could be secured so that only a user with the right fob could get them to work. … BodyCom could be used for pets, too: a collar-mounted fob could let a pet open the doggy door with its nose or paw, but unwanted animals wouldn’t be able to get in.”

Photo credit: Shutterstock.com

Read it at MIT Technology Review